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Start from 2014 April, Microsoft Azure introduces a new instance tier of Virtual Machine – Basic tier. These instances are well-suited for production applications that do not require the Azure load-balancer (bring-your-own LB or single instance) , development workloads, test servers and memory-focused batch processing applications.

There are few documents on what is the difference between basic tier VM and standard tier VM so here is a summary note based on my research

Price: Single tier VM can have up to 27% less in price than standard tier VM.

Feature cut: Basic tier VM does not include load balancing or auto-scaling. For basic tier VMs, you can add those to availability set for high availability, and implement your own load-balance mechanisms.

Microsoft announces Visual Studio Online general available this week. Visual Studio Online (aka VS Online) was named TFS Online for preview for quite a long time. Previously if you create test projects for practice, you might find it’s hard to discover how to delete projects. You can do that in either TFS Online Portal or Visual Studio client, the only support tool is tfsdeleteproject.exe, which can only be found on a machine with Virtual Studio installed.

Now in Visual Studio online, you can delete project in the portal control panel directly, though still a little hard to discover. Here are steps

Login to your Visual Studio online home page and click the control panel icon on the right top.

In Windows 8.1 you can login with Microsoft Account ( previously Windows Live ID). It give you the benefits to sync your contacts, calendar, hotmail settings, and roam your personalization settings like your Lock screen picture or desktop background across multiple devices.

When you setup a new Windows 8.1, by default you are asked for entering an existing Microsoft Account for logon. For users who do not like to use personal account in the office PC, they might find the logon with local user choice not discoverable. Here are two ways to skip using Microsoft Account as logon user when setup windows 8.1

Two years ago I posted a blog Fix The Windows Search service is not installed error in Windows Server 2008 R2 explains how to fix Outlook search slowly when installed on Windows Server 2008 R2. Now I upgrade the system to Windows Server 2012 but notice the steps to enable Windows Desktop Search service in Windows Server 2012 are changed. In short, Windows Desktop Search service was under role File Server in Windows 2008 R2 and now moved to under Feature Windows Search.

Here are new steps to enable the Windows Search service in Windows Server 2012

Start Server Manager.

Click Manage , and then click Add Roles and Features .

On the Before You Begin page, click Next .

On the Installation Type page, select Role-based or Feature-based Installation , and then click Next .

On the Server Selection page, select the server or virtual hard disk on which to install Windows Search Service.

On the Features page, select Windows Search Servic e, and then click Next

On the Confirmation page, verify that Windows Search Service is listed, and then click Install

In Windows Server 2008 R2, to define an application to be startup automatically for current user, one common way is to create an application shortcut and add it to startup folder. In Windows Server 2012, you might find you can’t find this startup folder any more.

Here is the steps to find startup folder in Windows Server 2012.

WinKey + C to open the charms bar

Click “Search”

Enter shell:startup and click on the first result returned.

Now the Startup folder should appear, you can create and move shortcuts for application you want automatically startup into this folder.

In windows 8.1, SkyDrive is built in. By default it’s set to Not sync files for offline usage, just put a placeholder. But you can set SkyDrive to sync all files or just selectly sync folders/files you want for offline usage.

To make SkyDrive sync all files for offline usage, open the metro SkyDrive application from start screenshot, change Access all files offline from default Off to On.

To make SkyDrive selectly sync the folders/files you want for offline usage, in metro SkyDrive app, by marking the folders/files and choose “make offline” or in desktop mode, by right clicking and selecting then appropriate option.